Category Archives: Skiing

LAKE TAHOE IS PERSONAL

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“Earth has no sorrow that Earth cannot heal.”
John Muir

Those words from Muir’s private journals, published more than 20 years after his death, are generally viewed through the anthropocentric lens that only sees the sorrows of humanity. I suggest that Muir meant exactly what he wrote, referring to the sorrows of Earth itself. When Muir was born in 1838 the population of the U.S. was 17 million (including 2.5 million slaves), and when he died in 1914 the U.S. population had grown to 100 million. Muir’s rambles through, love for, understanding of and influences on the Sierra Nevada need no introduction, and long before his death the deleterious impact of humanity on his favorite mountain range was obvious. And Muir, an avid reader and serious student of Thoreau, Wordsworth, Humboldt and Emerson, was likely aware of Thomas Malthus’ 1798 book “An Essay on the Principle of Population” in which he posits that human populations would continue to grow until stopped by disease, famine, war or calamity. Though he could not have foreseen such particular (and, to me and many others, personal) calamities as human caused climate change and today’s accelerating pollution of Lake Tahoe by algal growth, sediment erosion, eutrophication, cultural eutrophication, intentional and unintentional introduction of invasive fish, invertebrate and plant life, more than 220 years ago Malthus was aware that Planet Earth cannot support 8 billion human beings.
Throughout his life in America (he did not arrive in America from Scotland until he was 11 and not to California until he was nearly 30) he was an advocate for preserving the environment. Michael Turgeon writes, “As Muir grew older, his advocacy started translating into policy. Congress finally established Yosemite National Park in 1890, and Muir was instrumental in the formation of several other National Parks, including Sequoia and Grand Canyon. He soon co-founded the Sierra Club with the goal of furthering preservation and filling in the gaps left by government conservation work. And in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt travelled to Yosemite to meet with Muir, in what is now seen as a seminal moment for American environmentalism.”
That seminal moment was not enough for America’s environment, including the Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe. A study by the University of California Davis titled “ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS FACING LAKE TAHOE” includes this:

Destruction of Wetlands

“Lake Tahoe historically had natural wetlands that acted as filtration systems to remove excess nutrients from stream water before the runoff would reach the lake. This is one of the many reasons for Lake Tahoe’s famously clear and pristine water. Unfortunately, the value of wetlands was not fully known prior to the heavy development that began in the mid-1950s. For example, the Tahoe Keys was built on one of the largest wetlands in the Lake Tahoe basin. Research has shown that the wetlands of South Lake Tahoe used to remove tons of sediment and nutrients. The detrimental impact of this development can be easily seen during heavy runoff when plumes of sediment cause the water to turn cloudy.”

Forest Health

“The numbers of dead and dying trees throughout Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada are increasing due to a combination of drought stress, insect attack and disease. This carries direct implications for fire safety, biological diversity and carbon sequestration.”

Lake Tahoe has never relinquished its place in mind or heart or spirit as my first real home as a child, though I have not lived there in many years. As I write these words in September 2021, the unprecedented fires of the Sierra, including the ones impacting Lake Tahoe and environs are raging, just as the UC Davis study predicted a few years earlier. And those predictions are a direct consequence of what Thomas Malthus predicted more than 220 years ago. I mean, difficult as it is to accept and understand, none of this is surprising. These excerpts from my essay “My First Mentor: The Sierra Nevada”* describe that first real home:

“I turned 8 in 1946 and my family, like millions of others, was putting itself back together after the emotional/mental/relationship traumas and dislocations of WWII. Each of us—Mom, Dad and I—lived apart and led three very different lives during that war. When it ended we reunited and moved to the Sierra, living in a series of small mountain cabins where there were few and often no neighbors in winter. My primary companions after school and before dinner with Mom and Dad were the skis I used to access my Sierra Nevada playground. Neither of my parents were skiers or much interested in the outdoor life, but they encouraged and supported me in those things I most wanted to do—ski in winter, wander in the woods and meadows and hike up some of the peaks in summer, swim in the lakes when warm enough and read while at home. That is to say, a significant amount of my time between the ages of 8 and 14 was solitary.
“Solitude can be an unspoiled mindset for the experience of learning and the Sierra Nevada is a perfect setting for that same experience. Timothy Leary coined the term ‘set and setting’ to describe a slightly different (though not so different as some might think) consciousness expanding experience in which “set” was the mindset of the participant and “setting” referred to the surrounding social environment. The Sierra was more often than not my solitary social habitat. I was a young adult before being exposed to the writings of Muir, Plato or Leary, but I knew the Range of Light illuminated my path through them……..
“As a boy and young man the Sierra Nevada was the center of the world in which I learned to play, explore, test my skills and limits to learn about myself, including gratitude for the gift of living amidst such beauty and bounty. Of the Sierra it has been said, “One is never alone or unobserved,” and this is how I have always felt in the mountains of the world during more than seven decades of mountain life……..
“I don’t remember Ernie Lee as a skier, but he was the all-year manager of a summer resort. Ernie knew the Sierra and its huge snowfalls intimately, and knew how to live safely with them. His daughter Michele and I attended the same one room school with 8 grades, 8 students and one teacher. When Ernie found out that I was regularly wandering around the mountains on skis alone at the age of 11, he went out of his way to alert me to the steepness of slopes that might avalanche, the different types of untracked snow and how they affect one’s ability to ski in control and other basics of the Sierra Nevada not immediately obvious to a young boy. Ernie emphasized that the pleasure and satisfaction of moving through snow was a blessing that carried inherent and often hidden dangers that were the responsibility of each individual, no matter how old or inexperienced.
“It took many years to reach a level of consciousness that embraced the responsibility that inescapably goes with caring for that blessing by noticing that the Range of Light was not so bright as in the days of Muir. The relationship was out of balance and had changed noticeably in just a couple of decades in the life of a young man who loved his home, respected his mentor and sought the light. Everyone who spends time in the mountains learns that the smallest detail of nature is connected to everything else — in this case, the entire Sierra Nevada and to one’s own well being and survival. I was troubled by some of the first shifts in the natural order that I found unacceptable. Clear mountain streams where we once freely and safely drank were no longer drinkable, and more than one of my favorite mountain lakes was visibly befouled and no longer pristine. Both of these unnatural alterations and many others everyone reading this knows from personal experience and spoken or written word revealed that the student was taking more than he was returning. Neglect the responsibility and the gift will gradually—so gradually that the changes pass unnoticed and become acceptable and normal—decay, become polluted, diminished and be treated as commodity rather than cornucopia. E coli, stormwater runoff, fertilizers, greenhouse gas emissions, animal waste, sediment and “nutrients” creating algae — these words describe concepts I had never before associated with lakes, streams, ponds, meadows, valleys and mountains of the Range of Light.”

Those early rambles, tumbles, plods and schusses in the mountains above Lake Tahoe remained with me throughout a long life of skiing, some of it in the backcountry of mountains of the world, most of them in western America. I had the good fortune to skin up and ski down mountains in China, Chile, Argentina, Europe, Canada and Alaska, and some of my most cherished experiences and memories of places and people are from those exotic adventures. Because of the ‘set and setting’ of those first skiing endeavors above Lake Tahoe, the snowpack and weather and climate of the Sierra (the most compassionate of any mountain range I know) and the pure allure of its skyline, Lake Tahoe’s mountains were always my favorite backcountry skiing. At the age of 83 my skiing is limited to lift serviced runs down runs groomed to carpet smoothness by machines that cost a million dollars and pump carbon dioxide into an already overheated atmosphere so that my old bones can continue enjoying what’s left of the beauty and bounty of the Sierra Nevada and elsewhere. I am grateful and at the same time recognize my complicity in the destruction of that for which I am grateful.
In May 2021 I was visiting friends and family and drove from Reno to Lake Tahoe over the Mt. Rose Highway, a favorite route I have traveled innumerable times. The sky was blue and the air crystal clear. I stopped at the Scenic Overlook on the west side to enjoy the view of what is still to me the most beautiful lake on Earth, so long as one is not close enough to perceive the personal and Lake Tahoe changes between childhood and old age noted above. As always, I was moved by the landscape and lake which are part of me and I of them, when unexpectedly tears were running down my face and I was filled with both gratitude and emotions of loss I do not know how to describe. I am not the weepy type and such experiences are rare for me, but I believe the tears were nostalgic ones of appreciation for a life lived as well as I could manage and my personal piece of mankind’s sorrow of the certainty that the Earth will indeed heal its own sorrows.

*https://insidethehighsierra.com/
END

THE RACE

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In the winter of 1970-71 ski photographer Frank Davidson and I embarked on a joint book project featuring his photos of alpine ski racing along with free form words of mine attempting to capture the spirit of each photo. The book, unfortunately, never came to fruition but portions of it were printed in the 2nd edition of POWDER magazine. These words of 50 years ago are not the ones I would write today, but they do contain some of the spirit of the time. Here they are:

EXPRESSION
A man is what he does. He is also
the way it is done. He is the style of
his expression of who he is. He who wears
his colors and symbols for the world
to see, is something more than just
his actions. Every man finds his
own way to say to the world, “Look,
this is me. Look! See! See me,
and I won’t disappoint you.” Some
say it with a smile, others with
a sneer; some with a peace symbol,
others with a sword; some with
an open heart and some with a
closed hand. The style of
the expression is the individual’s
attempt to bring to the surface
from the deepest recesses of his human
soul, the fact that he is more
than how he spent his day.

SPEED
…blue red yellow blue red yellow blue red
and then just the powerful vision of color
and the poles and the white snow and speed, man,
speed. Not velocity—speed. That’s what racing is
all about. You know the course and you have run it many times
in your mind; if you make your body do it as well as
your mind, you will have a good result. You know
how fast you must go to win. The gap that must
be crossed is between your speed
and the other man’s. To cross
that space you focus your being
like an explosion into every
movement, every thought, every beat
of your heart. You must be agile,
but not too loose; strong but not
overpowering; courageous but not
foolishly so; and, most important
your mind must be all there and more—
so quick that no matter how fast the body
reacts, not how rapidly the skis move, it keeps
you slightly ahead, you must always be ahead of
your speed.

AGGRESSION
aggression is the trait which wins
fights, wars, ski races and other
games. It is sometimes confused
with initiative, pluck, courage and
being quite a fellow.

Aggression is part of everybody. It
can be seen in gossip, business,
sports, one upsmanship, government
and almost any human endeavor.
In ski racing, aggression can
be observed by the manner in
which a competitor goes through a
course. It can be seen in
his face at the same time.

No ski races are won without
aggression, and it is a good way
to express it. The world is
happier when aggression is restricted
to between the start and finish gates,
but not every man knows this.

STUDY
Sometimes it helps to
stop and study the course.
More can be learned in
two minutes of hard study
than by fifteen practice
runs, if you are practicing
a mistake.

It is good to stop
at times and study
every course in life.

FAILURE
The difficulty in accepting failure
is that there is nothing else to
be done about it. Failure is
hard because it is personal,
and because it betrays. Sometimes more
fate than failure—a ski breaks,
a binding opens—but fate and failure,
success and racer, are all one,
the same. Failure that does not
defeat leaves hope, and is a
great teacher. The other kind
of failure never forgives itself;
it is one of the saddest sights
on Earth. Every success is
made from a lot of failures.

VICTORY
…victory is the goal, the aim,
the reward. Yet, it arrives almost
as an afterthought, reminding
mortals that victory is the death
of the effort that achieved it.

Victory has unlimited disguises,
hiding nothing. The joy between
two friends who share the secrets of
success…the formal, sincere
congratulations of an admirer…the
inevitable winners circle victory
pose for the photographers; a little
sterile and impersonal, but
part of winning…
There are no final victories;
only tiny ones that never reach the surface,
giving strength and confidence for
the next race, not always on skis.
Winning is something, but to
learn the process of victory is more valuable;
that takes many victories and much luck.

SOME HISTORY, HEROES AND HEROINES of the BOULDER MOUNTAIN TOUR

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Rob Kiesel was among the most influential people in the history of Nordic skiing, including Sun Valley. His pioneering innovations in Nordic coaching, team building, trail making, trail grooming and glide-waxing changed both competitive and recreational Nordic skiing throughout the world. An accomplished alpine ski racer before switching to Nordic, he moved to Ketchum in 1971 and with a partner opened Snug Mountaineering for backpackers, climbers and cross-country skiers in the same building where The Elephant’s Perch now stands. The following year he took over the coaching of a small group of high school Nordic skier who had been training on Sun Valley’s trails and started the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s first Nordic program. Bob Rosso (who founded and still owns The Elephant’s Perch and has been one of the primary promoters and organizers of the BMT from the beginning) was his assistant. Over the next few years, Kiesel expanded the program and attracted skiers to Sun Valley. Kiesel died in October 2011 and a remembrance in Faster Skier reads, “According to Rosso, Kiesel liked to tinker and experiment. He spent time finding new ways to set cross-country track, perhaps most notably along the 32-kilometer Harriman Trail. There in the Wood River Valley, Kiesel helped develop one of the country’s first distance races for cross-country skiers — the Boulder Mountain Tour — in 1973. ‘There were these epic stories of Rob grooming a point-to-point trail with archaic 1970s snowmobile stuff,’ said SVSEF Nordic Program Director Rick Kapala. One of the first to dream up a year-round trail from Galena Lodge to the Sawtooth recreation area near Sun Valley, Kiesel had to route the trail. Kapala recalled stories of him driving into the river on his snowmobile.” High level athletics was in Kiesel’s blood, as his father, Bob, won an Olympic gold medal in 1932 as a member of the world record setting 4×100 meter relay at the Los Angeles games.
The first BMT from Galena Lodge to the SNRA was 30 km long and crossed highway 75 five or six times and was mostly either on top of the highway’s snowbank or right next to it. There were 48 competitors in that race and the first winners were Brent Hansen in 2:53:15 and Julie Gorton in 3:09:30. Hansen remembers the race like this: “Quite a bit of snow had blown in the night before the race. I was surprised to see how many people were at the start since it wasn’t a big sport in the valley yet. There was a mishmash of wooden skis, synthetic skis, weird touring set ups and probably some Army surplus. It seemed like a large cross section of skiers was there–from young to old. I had been experimenting with klister all season in the back country instead of using skins. So that is what I decided to use for the race, thinking it might be warmer on the bottom half. When the race started I immediately iced up with clumps of snow and so was at the back of the pack. I had to run with this on and off for the 1st half of the race. In the second part the snow was warming up and I was surprised to see I started passing a lot of people. From Phantom Hill to the finish the trail was blown in and difficult to find. I finally caught up with the lone skier ahead of me, Hemann Primus, who was much older than me, but going strong. I finally was able to pass him. Then I broke trail the rest of the way and realized how much work Hermann had done for us all! At the finish I was shocked to see that I had won. Many town folks had come out to watch and cheer us all on at the finish and along the route. The joy and excitement of the event really helped kick off Nordic skiing in the Wood River Valley where residents were longing for something like this and wanted to ski other places besides Baldy and Dollar…”
In 1974 the winners were Bob Rosso in 1:54:30 and Polly Sidwell in 2:18:15. The fastest times ever for the 30 km race, which ended in 1998, were Havard Solbakken in 1:05:34:3 and Heidi Selnes in 1:12:13:2. In 1999 some changes in the starting area made the BMT a 32 km race. The first winners of the 32 km race were Carl Swenson in 1:22:46:4 and Laura McCabe in 1:31:31:0. That distance lasted until 2014 when more course alterations moved it up to 34 km. The fastest times ever in the 32 km BMT were posted by Brooke Baughman in 1:12:36:1 and Eric Meyer 1:06:27:6, both in the 2003 race. The first winners in the 34 km BMT in 2014 were Chelsea Holmes in 1:23:55:9 and Sylvan Ellefson in 1:02:16:4, and the fastest overall times so far were posted in 2018 by Matt Gelso in 1:10:28:4 and Caitlin Gregg in 1:17:41:2.
But there’s much more to the BMT than individual winners in those categories. There is also a 15 km Half BMT that starts at Baker Creek and ends at the SNRA, and there are 14 age categories from 13 years and under (12 and under for the Half BMT) to 80 to 84 years. In 2019 the winners in the 13 and under category were Anika Vandenburgh in 2:01:52:95 and Holden Archie in 1:52:22:27. Anne Trygstad of Bozeman, Montana won the women’s 75 to 79 category in 2:41:57:13 and the lone competitor in the 80-84 age catagory was Steve Swanson who finished in 2:45:15:29.
Joanne Levy, who first came to Sun Valley from Hawaii in 1964 and who has been a fixture in the valley ever since, including a stint as Mayor of Sun Valley, competed in every BMT through 2014, sometimes winning her age category. That’s 41 consecutive Boulder Mountain Tours. In 2005 BMT organizers gave Levy a special jacket in acknowledgement of her 30 consecutive races (a couple of BMTs were cancelled due to snow conditions).
Dave Bingham, one of the finest multi outdoor sport athletes in WRV history, won the BMT twice and placed 2nd two other times in the early to mid-80s before, as he says, “…skate skiing became the go-to technique.” Bingham also placed 3rd in the 1980 Pikes Peak Marathon and in 1988 and 1990 won the NBC “Survival of the Fittest.” He is also one of the best known, accomplished climbers in Idaho and the author of the best climbing guide books to southern Idaho. Bingham describes his Nordic coaching career like this: “I coached for SVSEF in three stints, separated by other work, first under Kevin Swigert (approx 1980 – 1984), then with Sue Long and the beginning of Rick Kapala’s tenure, where I was head of the Prep (middle school) Team. That was roughly 1987 -1995. I quit because we’d just had our first child and I was busy chinking the newly-built River Run facilities. I came back as head Devo (elementary school) coach in about 2001, and retired in 2017 during which time the program grew from approximately 60 kids (combined north and south valley programs) to over 100 participants. 28 years!”
Kevin Swigert was director of the BMT for 13 years before retiring at the end of the 2014 season. Swigert, a Twin Falls native who has spent most of his life in the WRV, was a member of the U.S. Nordic Ski Team and three times National Champion. As Director, he was the primary force behind creating the Sun Valley Nordic Festival. From 48 racers in 1973, the BMT has grown to where only 1000 competitors, some of them among the best skiers in the world, are allowed each year. A BMT program from 2014 describes the early years as “…similar to the Boulder Mountain Tour races these days, with the more competitive racers bunched up in front while the recreational skiers enjoyed the scenery and the camaraderie that comes with a slower pace. What was different then was that the racers couldn’t pass easily because of the sketchy grooming. And as for the slower skiers, they really took time to enjoy the day. ‘There were no aid stations back then. We used to bring a backpack with lunch, and sometimes a bottle of wine,’ reminisced Andy Munter, the owner of Backwoods Mountain Sports and a veteran of many Boulder Mountain Tour races. ‘The trail was only set for one day a year, so people really took time to enjoy it.’” Today the WRV calls itself “Nordic Town, USA in winter” with over 200 km of groomed trails open to the public from Galena Lodge as far south as Bellevue. Last season there were 65,876 skier days reported on those trails. The economic impact of the BMT and recreational Nordic skiing on the community is difficult to precisely measure, but, according to Harry Griffith, Executive Director of Sun Valley Economic Development, “In 2012, the total economic impact of the nine days of Nordic Fest in Feb was $3.1 million for Blaine Co. The majority of this impact was from visitors who came from across the US for the Boulder Tour and stayed an average of 4 days to celebrate Nordic skiing.”
That’s a significant legacy to the local community from one man who liked to tinker and experiment and find new ways in the world.

DO YOU CARE IF OUR GRANDCHILDREN SKI?

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“Perhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.”
Christopher Hitchens, author

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
Donald Trump, President of the United States

“I have been described as the grandfather of climate change. In fact, I am just a grandfather and I do not want my grandchildren to say that grandpa understood what was happening but didn’t make it clear.”
James Hansen, leading climate scientist and author of “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last chance to Save Humanity

“Skiers did not create climate change, but we are among a few populations who will be hit by it hardest. It’s time to stand up and save our snow. Forget about fear. Get serious about advocacy and put candidates into office who will do the right thing and lead us into a cold, snowy future.”
Porter Fox, author

If you, esteemed reader, are among those who share Donald Trump’s values and purposeful (and, perhaps, real) ignorance in denying human caused global climate change, please read no further. Turn on your TV to Fox news or your radio to Rush Limbaugh, relax and enjoy the show. My intention here is not to insult or offend those who have been politely and clearly alerted to read no further, but, rather, to encourage everyone (including skiers) to, among other things personal, civic and environmental, get serious about advocacy. There is no time for relaxation in the face of our last chance. The show is getting less and less enjoyable and by the time our grandchildren reach our ages it will be a shit show for skiers/mountaineers and a worse one for those less privileged.
In the spirit of James Hansen, to be clear, the current and coming climate catastrophe is caused entirely by humans and can only be averted or even softened by them; but while Porter Fox is mostly correct skiers did and do contribute to climate change. We, fellow skiers, are complicit and the only way to start saving humanity (as well as the rest of Earth’s biota) is by getting serious about advocacy and putting candidates into office who will do the right thing and lead us into a cold, snowy future. Don’t let your grandkids have to say that grandpa and grandma understood what was happening but didn’t care enough to make it clear and did nothing about it. Lao Tzu said it best: “From caring comes courage,” and many years later Mahatma Gandhi said, “A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”
Skiing has always seemed to me a metaphor for larger aspects of life, including cowardice and bravery, courage and love, care and greed; and the industry of skiing, as well as many of its citizen practitioners, have been reluctant advocates of seriously and effectively addressing climate change. Every life-long skier old enough to be a parent has noted decreased snowfall and shorter winters since their own childhood. Everywhere in American ski country winters are shorter and warmer than they were 50 years ago, and every skier old enough to be a grandparent has changed skiing habits and patterns because of it. Every skier my age (81) or more (and several years less) realizes that skiing isn’t quite the disaster it is going to become without action, but it is certainly more and more an artificial snow show. When I was a boy I had the good fortune to live at Lake Tahoe, including the winter of 1951-52, (which recorded the second highest Sierra snowfall since records have been kept) when more than 65 feet of snow fell on nearby Donner Summit. Since then the amount of precipitation falling on the Sierra and elsewhere has dropped about 1.2% a year and more and more of that precipitation is falling as rain rather than snow. Porter Fox points out that “By 2050, snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is projected to decrease 40 to 70 percent. If we do not slow or stop burning fossil fuels, we will be looking at brown mountain ranges all winter long as soon as 80 years from now.” The artificiality of man-made snow is in some ways in the short view good for the business and practice of lift-serviced skiing: among other things, so long as it continues to be cold enough it is controlled by man without relying on nature, is more manageable and can be groomed into surfaces smooth enough that an 81 year old experienced skier as well as first year skiers can more easily be enticed to buy a lift ticket and slide upon it. But artificial snow is part of the problem of global warming, sort of like putting an infected band aid on a self-inflicted open wound and then again stabbing the wound through the infected band aid with a dirty knife. Over the last 200 years mankind has slowly crippled nature’s natural processes by releasing CO2 and other air pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and creating the Greenhouse Effect. The process of making artificial snow contributes to the Greenhouse Effect and adds to global warming, as, of course, does all the automobile and airplane miles each of us travels to our favorite mountain and its retreating snowpack. In many places, before too long it will not be cold enough to consistently rely on even artificial snow.
Every skier is part of the problem and, if there proves to be one, part of the solution. Since the United States has only 4.6% of the world population and is 2nd highest (next to China with a population 4 times that of America’s 3.11 million citizens) contributor of greenhouse gases which cause global warming, each individual American has a larger responsibility (and burden) than citizens of other countries to be an advocate for a cold, snowy future for all the Earth’s inhabitants including our skiing (or not skiing) grandchildren. Any solution starts with the individual but it does not end there. Each of us can alleviate the ongoing destruction of Earth’s atmosphere and environment in many ways, starting with becoming educated. If one is uneducated or confused about the matter, a good place to start is Union of Concerned Scientists at https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming#.W6PW-vZMFPY where it is made clear (by the finest scientific minds) that global warming is real, that it is entirely caused by mankind and was not created by or for China, though that country is the leading contributor to greenhouse gases.
The individual effort matters, but as skier citizens of America—the only nation on earth to reject the Paris Agreement on climate change, which Trump falsely and treacherously described as “…an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries.”—we need to become advocates for making America a good citizen of the nations of the world instead of the moronic, soulless, ethically challenged MAGA pro-fossil leadership/oil/gas/coal corporate directed imperialist mercenary the U.S. government has officially declared itself to be and which the rest of the world has duly noted. The individual matters, but unless the ideology, policies and practices of the U.S. government changes drastically the individual will not matter enough. As individual skiers we can begin with the world of skiing and we need to vote, march, protect, protest, read science and push on corporate leadership to ensure THOSE entities are pushing on government. Porter Fox published an article in Powder 3 years ago about the many ski industry leaders who give money to climate change deniers in the U.S. government. They include Vail Resorts, Deer Valley Resort Company, Solitude Mountain Resort, Alta Ski Area, Snowbird, Brighton Ski Resort, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Mammoth Mountain, KSL Capital Partners (which owns Squaw Valley, Loon Mountain, Sunday River and Sugarloaf) as well as the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA). NSAA issues an annual report on ‘Sustainable Slopes’ subtitled “Keep Winter Cool” and its charter states, “In order to continue to offer quality recreational experiences that complement the natural and aesthetic qualities that draw these visitors to the mountains, the National Ski Area Association (NSAA) and its member resorts have committed to improving environmental performance in ski area operations and management.” A worthy commitment but, since several of the member resorts are those donating money to climate change deniers in the U.S. government, it calls into question their definition of the word ‘commitment’ among other obvious questions. Last year KSL teamed up with Henry Crown and Company (HCC), which owns Aspen Skiing Company, to acquire Intrawest Resorts Holdings and Mammoth Resorts. This company is called Squaw Valley Ski Holdings (SVSH) which consists of 12 ski resorts with, according to KSL’s website, “… approximately six million skier visits, 20,000 skiable acres and significant land available for real estate development, as well as Canadian Mountain Holidays, the world’s leading heli-ski operator, plus comprehensive aviation and real estate businesses.” The Aspen Skiing Company, still owned by HCC but not part of SVHS, is a minority bright light in the U.S. ski industry by intentionally and effectively being serious about doing the right thing and leading us into a cold, snowy future. Check here: https://www.aspensnowmass.com/we-are-different/take-action
Some backcountry skiers and riders do not use ski resort facilities and perhaps do not think of the ski industry as representing them or their values and interests. Whatever the merits of this mindset, in reality the ski industry is the public face of skiing in the halls and offices and bars and restaurants and, most important, lobbying donations given to members of Congress who are deniers of human caused global warming. James Inhofe, Oklahoma Senator and Chair of the Senate Committee on environment and Public Works, has a slightly different perspective than Donald Trump on the ‘hoax’ of a global warming conspiracy theory, saying, “Because ‘God’s still up there’, the ‘arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.’” Giving money to climate change deniers in the U.S. government who share Trump and Inhofe’s denials of reality (for whatever stated reasons—God ‘up there’ or China ‘over there’ or head up ‘somewhere’) is supporting killing the very snow that we, fellow skiers, depend on as our foundation, revere and make the tracks of life upon.
Bob Dylan, as he so often has, said it best:
“While money doesn’t talk, it swears
“Obscenity, who really cares
“Propaganda, all is phony”
To state the obvious, no obscenity adequately describes giving the money that skiers pay in order to ski to people who call any reality that interferes with the short-term bottom line a hoax, people whose actions indicate they do not care a snowflake in hell whether our grandchildren ski or, even, survive.
Personally, I care.
Do you?
If so, forget about fear, embrace the prerogative of the brave and learn to love getting serious about advocacy. The fate of life on Earth and the skiing possibilities of our grandchildren, depend on it. It’s that simple, human caused global warming is real and the money the ski industry gives to climate change deniers in the U.S. government is your and my public face, fellow skiers. Is that the face you want the government and the world to see, skier friends? If not, then take whatever steps are necessary to stop the ski industry from giving money to climate change deniers in the government and, even more important, vote and work to get out the vote and elect who will recognize the coming (and already evident) climate disaster and not avoid the real work by calling it a ‘hoax.’
While the loss of the incredible if not always acknowledged luxury and privilege of being able to ski one or one hundred days a year is minuscule in the larger scope of the coming climate catastrophe, it is our way of life and what we know and love. Snow is the foundation of that life, knowledge and love. In all things, when the foundation collapses everything it supports quickly follows. It must be acknowledged that it might already be too late, that humanity has not cared enough soon enough to avoid the catastrophe we have brought upon Earth and all its inhabitants, but fighting the good fight to do the right thing in what might be a losing battle has many advantages over resignation, despair and surrender. Auden Schendler is the driving force and Vice President of Sustainability for the Aspen Skiing Company’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, avert the coming climate catastrophe and allow our grandchildren to ski. In a NY Times op-ed Schendler wrote, “Historically, we’ve tackled the biggest challenge — that of meaning, and the question of how to live a life — through the concept of “practice,” in the form of religion, cultural tradition or disciplines like yoga or martial arts. Given the stark facts, this approach might be the most useful. Practice has value independent of outcome; it’s a way of life, not a job with a clear payoff. A joyful habit. The right way to live.
“…I.F. Stone…said…’The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.’… “…To save civilization, most of us would need to supplement our standard daily practices — eating, caring for family and community, faith —with a steady push on the big forces that are restraining progress, the most prominent being the fossil fuel industry’s co-option of government, education, science and media…Our actions must be to scale, so while we undertake individual steps in our lives, like retrofitting light bulbs, we must realize that real progress comes from voting, running for office, marching in protest, writing letters, and uncomfortable but respectful conversations with fathers-in-law. This work must be habitual. Every day some learning and conversation. Every week a call to Congress. Every year a donation to a nonprofit advancing the cause. In other words, a practice.
“…There should be no shortage of motivation. Solving climate change presents humanity with the opportunity to save civilization from collapse and create aspects of what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called ‘the beloved community.’ The work would endow our lives with some of the oldest and most numinous aspirations of humankind: leading a good life; treating our neighbors well; imbuing our short existence with timeless ideas like grace, dignity, respect, tolerance and love. The climate struggle embodies the essence of what it means to be human, which is that we strive for the divine.
“Perhaps the rewards of solving climate change are so compelling, so nurturing and so natural a piece of the human soul that we can’t help but do it.”
Each individual can become an advocate in several ways, starting with reducing your personal carbon footprint: Huffington Post recommends 7 instant and uncomplicated actions….1.) Cease eating meat or eat less meat; 2.) unplug your devices; 3.) drive less; 4.) don’t buy ‘fast fashion’; 5.) plant a garden; 6.) eat local and organic; 7.) line-dry your clothes (not always possible in snow country). For individuals who wish to advocate in the larger arena, a good place to start is https//www.patagonia.com/actionworks or Protect Our Winters (POW) at protectourwinters.org
Many reading this have a practice of skiing (and other practices of moving over and through snow, but the author is a skier) that has given meaning to and helped answer the question of how to live a life. More, the rewards of skiing and other practices of moving over snow….”are so compelling, so nurturing and so natural a piece of the human soul that we can’t help but do it.” All we have to do is extend the practice to solving climate change.
What better practice of life could there be than to strive for the divine? What better gift could we leave our grandchildren than their own cold, snowy futures?

FOREWARD TO “The Spirit of Icarus: Tales of Flying Close to the Sun” by John Crews

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“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.”
Aristotle

John Crews both knows and understands his own well-lived life of learning, experiencing, exploring the limits of and teaching several physical skills in the spirit of Icarus. To John, that spirit does not represent the mainstream association of Icarus with the human weakness of hubris and its inescapable destructive consequences. Instead, for Crews, the spirit of Icarus embodies the Stephen Hawking quote, “The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.” He delineates this difference in the introduction as “”…the Icarus spirit that determines whether Icarus spirits appear as ‘crazy people’ or as ‘smart people’ with a slightly different value system.”
Crews is smart and completely aware that the line that characterizes the two aspects of Icarus spirit is as thin and some would say invisible as the difference between good judgment and good luck, as evidenced in the sub-title of “The Spirit of Icarus”: Tales of Flying Close to the Sun. Chronologically, the initial autobiographical tale in this fine book is about John’s first fall down the basement stairs in his family’s Washington State home when he was 1 ½ years old. He writes, “My next clear memory is of sitting on the concrete floor at the bottom of those stairs looking back up. I was not clear about what had happened in between, except that it had been very exciting. The strange sensations all over my body I recognized as PAIN, which called for extreme vocalization until someone showed up to make it better.”
That first very exciting experience appears to have inspired in John a slightly different value system and a lifetime quest for more and more and more and, yes, there has been some pain. “The Spirit of Icarus” is a beautiful depiction in word and photo of that quest. John Crews has spent his life polishing his physical skills at the limits of moving on, in and through as well as considerable air time over water (if one accepts that snow is a form of water), and he has passed on his understanding of that life as one of the outstanding teachers of his professions. I have known, liked and admired John for many years through the world of one of his endeavors……skiing……and can attest that he is one of the finest skiers and ski instructors in America. I am neither practiced nor knowledgeable in matters of the warm weather, big wave, oceanic endeavors he pursues when winter ends each year, but his reputation allows me confidence that he is as accomplished as practitioner and teacher there as he is on skis.
And there is this: on the wall of my office is a small cloth tapestry given to me by a friend with a depiction of Buddha and a quote attributed to him. The quote reads:

Success is not the key to happiness.
Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing,
You will be successful.

John Crews is 68 years old and a happy man.

Check out the book available at your local bookstore or on Amazon

RECOGNIZING THE MIRACLE OF THE MINDFUL TURNS OF SKIING

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“Every day we are engaged in a miracle that we don’t even recognize: the blue sky, the white clouds, the green leaves, and the curious eyes of a child. All is a miracle.
“When we walk we’re not walking alone. Our parents and ancestors are walking with us. They’re present in every cell of our bodies. So each step that brings us healing and happiness also brings healing and happiness to our parents and ancestors. Every mindful step has the power to transform us and all our ancestors within us, including our animal, plant and mineral ancestors. We don’t walk for ourselves alone. When we walk, we walk for our family and for the whole world.”
Thich Nhat Hanh “At Home in the World”

Many skiers are familiar with the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn because of his writing and activism during the Viet Nam war, but the majority of skiers are not practitioners of Buddhism or familiar with the value it places on what is termed ‘a skilled mind.’ A basic Buddhism guide describes such capable awareness: “Essentially, according to Buddhist teachings, the ethical and moral principles are governed by examining whether a certain action, whether connected to body or speech is likely to be harmful to one’s self or to others and thereby avoiding any actions which are likely to be harmful. In Buddhism, there is much talk of a skilled mind. A mind that is skilful avoids actions that are likely to cause suffering or remorse.” It may be a stretch for some to conflate the deliberate, well-placed step of walking with the faster movement of controlling the slide down a snow-covered slope on a pair of skis as equally mindful tools of healing, happiness and transformation for the whole world, but it is a stretch I am willing and obliged to make. More people walk than ski but we all carry our ancestors within, and the necessary control of the arc of the turn is as personally powerful as the placement of the foot and requires the same mindful attention to the present moment. Those who may posit that the act of skiing carries a greater inherent risk than that of walking have a point worth considering, but as a lifetime skier I am far less likely to encounter or cause harm skiing any slope I choose to ski than I would be on a leisurely walk alone in certain neighborhoods of any large city on earth, and, alas, most smaller cities and towns. That said, there are all too many skiers and walkers with unskilled minds, dangerously and obliviously unaware that they do not move alone on the paths and slopes of the world.
Each of us carries and is engaged with the miracle of sky, clouds, leaves, parents, children, ancestors, animals, plants and minerals of Earth with every breath and step we take and every turn we make—for ourselves, our family and the whole world. Every skier who has ever lived knows instinctively if not always intellectually that the act of skiing is transformative, but not every skier appreciates that none of us ski by or for ourselves alone. Stop alongside any blue, green, black or black diamond ski run in the country and observe the action, and I am confident you will notice a surprising number of skiers who seem oblivious to the skiers around them as more than impediments to the arc of their turn, completely unaware of the ancestors carried within. Perhaps you have literally encountered one of them. If so, I hope you both came away from the meeting unharmed, transformed and more mindful rather than in need of physical, emotional and karmic healing.
Common sense and modern science assures us that we do indeed carry our parents and ancestors within us. I like the idea which makes sense that engaging in action that brings healing and happiness to ourselves includes our parents and ancestors, and not just those connected by direct genetics as all things and every person are connected. Those for whom skiing is a major factor of life do not question the importance of engaging in it with a skilled mind.
Mindful skiers are aware that the miracle of skiing as we know it is unraveling in many different though connected ways. One indicator as obvious as and directly connected to the blue sky and white clouds is that in the last 40 years the average annual snowpack in the Western United States has dropped by 41% with a consequent shrinkage of 34 skiable days. This trend is expected to continue so that in 50 years the mountains of today’s Western American ski resorts will be brown in February. Ski resorts around the world are closing because of lack of reliable snow. Another thread in the fabric of the undoing of skiing is the economic reality of recent decades that fewer and fewer citizens of the world can afford to ski, and the rate of new skiers entering the sport is declining. The inequality of the world’s economic reality (especially in the United States), the diminishing snowpack and the subtle changes in the blue sky and white clouds and the unequivocal environmental crises are as interconnected as the parents, children, ancestors, animals, plants and minerals of Earth. These same dynamics are evident everywhere on Earth and all signs are that they will only increase, not diminish. That is, the untying of the miracle of the Earth’s environment and the inequality of its human economy are as woven together as all our ancestors and, it needs emphasizing, descendants.
Our parents and ancestors are walking and skiing with us, and so are all our descendants, including our plant, animal and mineral ones. Humans with unskilled minds have for far too long treated the Earth as commodity and market rather than cornucopia and miracle, and the consequences of such greed based carelessness are obvious everywhere on earth and do not need more description. It is going to get worse and humans are not going to heal the Earth. In the process of healing itself it is possible and very likely probable that the Earth will rid itself of humans, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.
What we can do for ourselves is take each step and make every turn on skis with a skillful mind bringing healing and happiness to each of us and all our ancestors in the present moment. And if that’s all we can do, why not do it?

AROUND THE WORLD ON SUN VALLEY’S BALD MOUNTAIN WITH DANO

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Dan ‘Dano’ Hawley has skied at least 25,000 vertical miles on Baldy since he first visited Sun Valley in the mid-1950s. He has most likely skied more, and he’s only 69. The circumference of Earth is 24,901 miles and is still spinning and so is he.
Dano is a true Idahoan, born to ski Sun Valley. His great-grandfather, James H. Hawley, was the ninth Governor of Idaho from 1911 to 1913 and Mayor of Boise from 1903 to 1905. Both his father and mother (though they hadn’t yet met) and their siblings skied Sun Valley in 1936. Dano has a photo of his mother skiing on Lolo Pass in 1929. His father was working as a physician in Hailey where he planned to stay when WWII began, but when the war ended Dr. Hawley returned to Boise where Dano was born, raised and schooled. The Hawley family often visited Sun Valley and introduced Dano to skiing Dollar Mt. when he was 5. Within a year the boy was on Baldy.
After high school Dano attended the College of Idaho in Caldwell where he earned a BA in Economics. Skiing interrupted education when he took one year off college to move to France to ski, which he considers a ‘great experience.’ He graduated in 1972 and immediately moved to Ketchum where he has lived ever since. He makes his living plowing snow in winter (Hawley Snow Removal) and working as a river guide for Solitude River Trips on the Middle fork of the Salmon River in summer and Barker River Trips on the Jarbridge, Bruneau and Owyhee Rivers in spring. He is quoted on the Solitude website as saying, “I love seeing little kids grow up and come back with their own kids.” He worked as a heli-ski guide for 25 years and as a ski coach for the Hailey Ski Team for 12 years. He is an avid mountain biker between ski seasons and rides his bike most days when he’s not on the river. He says that in the late 60s, before there were mountain bikes, “I would ride my French road racing bike through the backcountry to all the high mountain lakes.”
Physical activity and personal interaction with others are intrinsic to Dano’s life. A typical winter day when it has snowed begins at 2 a.m. when he goes to work plowing until about 8 a.m. After that he shovels out the iconic Irving’s Red Hots hot dog stand on Picabo Street across from the Warm Springs Lodge. He has completed this chore for owner Jill Rubin for the 40 years her landmark business has operated. According to Dano, 150 winter mornings he walks a quarter mile to the Warm Springs lift by 8:30 a.m. where he socializes, is on one of the early chairs (never—except on certain powder days—competing for the first chair) and begins his Baldy day of skiing. Dano says of his passion for skiing, “Each time I go skiing I have more fun that the time before.”
Dano skis at least 10 runs every day, sometimes more, often with friends and periodically alone, interspersed with tea and social time at Lookout Lodge on top of Baldy. For Dano, “It’s home. There’s a lack of crowds. It’s our own private Idaho.” He skis the bowls, the groomers, the bumps and the cat tracks with an inimitable style and relaxed demeanor, and he is a reliable source of finding the best skiing of the day on Baldy. After all, few know it better.

BOBBIE BURNS, the first hotdogger

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A few years ago Sun Valley’s Bobbie Burns received an unexpected phone call. Scott Sports of Switzerland was checking in to ask if Burns was interested in collaborating with Scott to re-make and re-introduce to the market The Ski, Burns’ revolutionary freeskiing ski that had been out of production for more than two decades. Burns said “yes” and The Ski came back to action. Burns himself at the age of 80 had never been out of action and enjoying life with a smile. That Scott has reintroduced The Ski is entirely appropriate, as the Late Ed Scott, who started the company, and Burns are icons of both Sun Valley and the larger world of skiing.
Bobbie Burns’ impact on the history of freeskiing, the evolution of making skis and the skiing culture of Sun Valley is enormous. Born in Idaho, raised in Ogden and Salt Lake City, Burns did not grow up skiing. His younger years were spent mastering tap dancing, ballet, gymnastics and platform diving, skills he put to unorthodox use when he began skiing in his early 20s and moved to Sun Valley. That was in the mid 1950s. Since then Burns has skied all over the world and Sun Valley is still his favorite place to ski. Burns enjoyed skiing bumps and discovered he seemed to have a higher balance point than skiers of more traditional techniques and could absorb bumps better by holding his hands and arms above his head rather than in front of his torso. He has said of his skiing in those years, “I was an accident waiting for a place. The only thing I had was a lot of guts, balance, and the ability to have fun.”
Accent on having fun.
By the mid 1960s he was revolutionizing the techniques of bump skiing, the concept of freeskiing and the possibilities of steel thighs, noodle knees, balance and showmanship in skiing. With his long, blonde hair, unorthodox technique, unbelievable athleticism and huge smile Burns changed the world of performance skiing, in some ways simply because he was having more fun than everyone else. He has described his skiing style as “…different because I had large cojones but no ability.” All mogul skiers, from that time to the very best of today’s freestylers, are beholden to him.
Dick Barrymore saw Bobbie skiing bumps in Sun Valley and remembered, “The sight changed my life as a filmmaker. Burns’ style was not like any I had seen before….Burns attacked a field of moguls like Errol Flynn attacking a band of pirates. When he skied bumps, he sat down in a permanent toilet-seat position, with his arms high over his head holding 60 inch long ski poles….Bob Burns was, in 1969, the first hot dogger.”
Modern freestyle skiing would be very different if not unimaginable without Bobbie Burns, but it can be argued that his greatest contribution to skiing was not in way he made the ski turn but, rather, in making The Ski.
Like all ski aficionados (also known as ‘addicts’ and ‘bums’) Burns had to make a living and he took whatever jobs kept him on skis, including tuning skis. In the mid-‘60s Chuck Ferries, one of America’s great ski racers had retired from racing and was coaching the U.S. Women’s Ski Team and invited Burns to help him, more for his knowledge of skis and people than for his expertise in racing. Burns has said, “Racing was never for me. What possible fun is it to run gates? You have to slow down to do it!” They formed a working relationship such that in 1968 when Ferries retired from coaching and a job with Head Skis and went to work for K2 Skis he convinced Burns to come with him to make skis. Burns says, “I didn’t know shit about skis,” but, then, there had been a time when he knew nothing about skiing.
He moved to Seattle, signed up to get a graduate degree in chemical engineering at UW and began to learn how to make skis for K2. He and Ferries studied the construction of the best European skis of the time, particularly the Dynamic VR7, and began making skis for American racers, including Marilyn and Bob Cochran, Mike Lafferty and Spider Sabich. The first skis, according to Burns, “…were the worst ever skied upon. Everybody hated them, except Marilyn.” They must have learned quickly, because in 1969 Marilyn Cochran became the first American to win a world cup title (in giant slalom), and Lafferty, Sabich and Bob Cochran (among several others) went on to successful ski racing careers on skis made by Bobbie Burns.
But Burns wanted to make skis for himself and the way he liked to ski, not for racing. He explained, perhaps having as much fun with the world as he was having on skis: “I came up with The Ski when I was driving back to Sun Valley, Idaho. I saw all the sagebrush along the highways, and I started thinking I’d build a ski out of it. If you’ve ever tried to stomp or pull sagebrush out of the ground—in those days skis broke easily—you know you can never break the stuff. I also wanted to make it soft so I could ski bumps really fast, and I wanted to put artwork on the top and do blocks of color. That was way back in the ’70s.”
In 1974 Burns returned to Sun Valley and began making The Ski, the first ski, according to Burns, ever made in the Wood River Valley. The rest, as they say, is history. The Ski revolutionized free skiing for the masses in much the same way as Bobbie Burns revolutionized free skiing for elite athletes of performance skiing. The Ski was soft lengthwise and stiff torsionally with simple blocks of color for artwork unlike anything seen in skiing before. In the mid-80s Burns sold his company. Since then he has continued to make skis for select customers, designed clothes, taught skiing, worked as a consultant, raised his children and, of course, skied. And then Scott Sports asked Bobbie if he was interested in re-creating The Ski. He was and Burns says, “It was kind of like being born again. I really believe The Ski by Scott is a rebirth, and everything has gotten better.”
That is, you can’t have too much fun. Just ask Bobbie Burns.

ANOTHER WINTER

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Another winter within the mountains and upon the mountain is upon us, and not a day too soon, thanks Ullr. The mountain of winter’s choice depends on the person, but for those of us whose lives in one way or another revolve around the practice of skiing in the small though growing mountain towns of western America November is the beginning of the best time of the year. Snow and cold temperatures and white upon those peaks gladdens the heart and quickens the pulse of those who ski and snowboard and snowshoe and skate and, truth be told, the even larger numbers of those who in some actively uninvolved way have an economic or sentimental interest in how glad are those hearts, how quick those pulses.
Not for us are the frigid, unaffectionate words of Victor Hugo: “Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man.” One imagines poor old Victor, hunched like a glowering gargoyle over some small desk in a dank, chill Left Bank apartment with one tiny window looking out upon Notre Dame, contemplating his own considerable tragedies and the general sufferings of mankind, completely missing that air temperature is not responsible for turning the heart to stone and that when water is transformed to ice you are not required to cower upon the river’s bank waiting for spring to unthaw your heart of stone. Instead, you can put on a warm layer of clothes and get outside and breathe some cold, clean, invigorating air and learn the joys of sliding upon frozen water. In Hugo’s case, it would have been French, 19th century winter’s version of putting into action the pop wisdom adage, “If you are given a lemon, make lemonade.” Victor would have been better off getting out of the city with its famous, Gothic, man-made cathedral and taking a trip to Chamonix to cast his eyes upon nature’s own cathedrals, the Aiguille du Midi and Mont Blanc, among others, and walking up to Argentiere and checking out the Mer De Glace, the sight of which will thaw the stoniest heart. His spirits would surely have been raised if he had consulted Ullr instead of the deformed and definitely downer if good hearted Quasimodo and taken a walk in the Alps and breathed some clean, fresh, frigid air rather than holing up in Paris contemplating the dour, gargoylesque spirits spouting water off the flying buttresses of Notre Dame.
No, Victor Hugo’s dark view of winter is not for us who live in mountain town western America not by accident but by choice. We are more in tune with and the spirit of one of the most extraordinary skiers in the history of snow, Fridtjof Nansen. Indeed, Nansen, explorer, skier, scientist, statesman and humanitarian, was among the most amazing humans in the history of man, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his part in saving the lives of some 400,000 prisoners of war after World War I. Nansen exemplified the spirit of what Dick Munn, an adult skiing friend of my childhood who loved to ski and who had seen war and wanted nothing more to do with it, once said to me: “If everyone in the world skied, there would be no more wars.” Whether he was right or not in his idealism, I have always remembered it and the fact that Munn was inspired to think of it by the activity and place and season of skiing. Like Nansen, Dick Munn was warmed and made contemplative by skiing, the mountains and winter. A man for all seasons, Nansen wrote with a skier’s heart of skiing in the Arctic, “Tuesday, November 13. Thermometer –38 degrees C. (-36.4 degrees F)…..A delightful snowshoe (ski) run in the light of the full moon. Is life a vale of tears? Is it such a deplorable fate to dash off like the wind….through a night like this, in the fresh, crackling frost, while the snowshoes glide over the smooth surface, so that you scarcely know you are touching the earth, and the stars hang high in the blue vault above? This is more, indeed, than one has any right to expect of life; it is a fairy tale from another world, from a life to come.”
Yea, Fridtjof.
Yea, winter is here with its short days and long nights and brisk air that waken the body at first inhalation, putting it on full alert that this is the time to give complete attention to the smallest details of survival. It is a time to take note of those patches of ice on the sidewalk, the road, the ski hill and in the thoughts and hearts and intentions of those whose actions and decisions might make a difference in your life—the driver with cell phone at the ear coming around a glazed corner with an equally glazed look in the eye, the chattering of skis or snowboard coming up behind you with the sound of imperfect control, or someone who spins the truth with such icy determination that believing them could, indeed, turn the water of heaven and the heart of man into stone.

CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS IN SKIING

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The following appeared as a letter to the editor in Powder Magazine last spring, in support of an article Porter Fox wrote in the online Powder Magazine at http://www.powder.com/stories/news/campaign-donations-link-ski-industry-leaders-climate-change-deniers

November 15, 2016
Bozeman, Montana

To the editor:

Re: Those who support deniers of human caused climate change.

The world of skiing is a microcosm of the larger world. I am one of those fortunate enough to have spent my life in this privileged, tiny, dependent on snow sphere. My gratitude for a life in skiing includes some awareness that all things are connected, no matter how large or small one’s world of experience and attention, and that each of us are responsible for how the world is faring. That is, our actions and thoughts matter.

Snow is the literal foundation of skiing and, as reservoir for the waters of spring and summer, the foundation of much larger spheres of life than are found in the corporate properties and offices of Vail Resorts, Jackson Hole, Mammoth Mountain, Squaw Valley, Sugarloaf and others. Human caused climate change is and has been and will continue to decimate the world’s environment and ecology, including the foundation of the world of skiing. It is a crisis of unprecedented danger to all life on Earth, and its menace will be immeasurably compounded for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Skiers and other human beings who attempt to deny human caused climate change are absurd and shameful, and their futile attempts to deny reality are based on stupidity, ignorance or purposeful ignorance. Stupidity can sometimes be alleviated by experience. Ignorance can be cured by well-intentioned and thorough education. Purposeful ignorance—which afflicts those who are neither stupid nor ignorant but whose compassion, personal ethics and morality have been stunted and deformed into deception by greed, ideology, laziness or the illusion of disconnection from all things not serving their self-interest—can be coaxed into reality by honest, courageous journalism.

Thank you, Porter Fox and Powder Magazine, for being the first major skiing writer and publication to address this issue and shine some light on the dark deniers. Don’t stop now.

Sincerely,

Dick Dorworth